Hadrianus Junius

Hadrianus Junius (1511–1575), also known as Adriaen de Jonghe, was a Dutch physician, classical scholar, translator, lexicographer, antiquarian, historiographer, emblematist, school rector, and Latin poet. He is not to be confused with several namesakes (including a seventeenth-century Amsterdam school rector). He was not related to .

Adriaen de Jonge or Hadrianus Junius, was born in the Westfrisian town of Hoorn on 1 July 1511, from a family of local regents. He attended the Latin School in Haarlem. At the relatively advanced age of 23, he went to study in Louvain, where he spent a couple of years. He then embarked on his peregrinatio academica, which led him through Siena, Bologna, Venice and Rome. In his letters, he reports on his visits to the famous legal humanist Andrea Alciato, his attendance at an interrupted Greek-orthodox liturgical service in Venice, and on an experiment with glow-worms in the Bolognese countryside. He obtained his doctoral degree in philosophy and medicine in Bologna in 1540. Not long after his graduation, Junius left for Paris, a centre of printing. There he acted as an agent for the printer Christian Wechel, who published his first work: an edition with Latin translation of Cassius Iatrosophista (1541). In Paris Junius seems to have met Edmund Bonner, bishop of London, with whom he visited Ghent.

In April 1544 he headed for London, where Thomas Howard, third duke of Norfolk, made him his physician. Howard’s son Henry, the ‘poet earl of Surrey’ (who was naturally interested in literary men like Junius) enlisted him as a tutor to his children. Junius spent much of his time in Norfolk, at the family’s castle in Kenninghall. He divided his time between private instruction to the children (about whom he complained) and on various scholarly projects: an edition of Curtius Rufus’ biography of Alexander the Great (published 1546), an edition with translation of part of Plutarch’s Moral essays (published 1547) and a Greek-Latin Lexicon (1548). The alliance with the Howards came to an abrupt end when Thomas and Henry Howard were imprisoned on allegations of high treason. Junius lost a large part of his library when his patron’s belongings were confiscated. Even before Henry Howard was executed by Henry VIII, on 19 January 1547, Junius successfully solicited the patronage of Charles V’s envoy Franciscus van der Dilft (or Dilfius), to whom he dedicated his edition of Plutarch. He dedicated his Lexicon to the new king: the very young Protestant Edward VI. Apparently, Junius tried to secure a position at the English court; in 1550 he dedicated the manuscript of his work on calendars to Edward. Meanwhile, he also praised Charles V in his edition of Curtius and perhaps he tried his luck, through Van der Dilft, at the Habsburg court as well, since he did not feel entirely comfortable witnessing the conversion of the English Church to Protestantism. In his letters, he describes the stripping of the altars as a result of the Edwardian injunctions

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